Failure: Stillbirth on the farm

Both Rosie and I feel that in addition to chronicling our successes on our homestead we also need to hold our failures up to the light so that others can learn not just what do do but what not to do.

Yesterday Sheep #2 started to go into what we thought was labor but lasted much longer. In most cases sheep go threw less than 1 hour of labor prior to a birth if it lasts more than an hour something is often very wrong. #2's labor lasted threw the afternoon an into the night threw the morning and into midday. There was very little we could do to help her as she was not dilated nor was there any fetus presentation, all we could do was watch and wait. There was no doubt in our minds that something was wrong, but we did not know how bad it was going to be, would one fetus live? Both? Just her? Or would she have to be put down to end her suffering? We watched and waited.

This morning she began active labor with dilation and pushing, this lasted most of the morning. We kept a close eye on her but still no presentation. She would spend some time on her side yelling and pushing then stand and walk a little way before dropping to her side again and pushing. After quite a bit of that we began to see some fetus presentation, looking to be a head. I was able to keep her still and down while Rosie with Ivan in a backpack baby carrier helped to ease the fetus out, timing her help with the pushing of the ewe. It became obvious early on that this would be a stillbirth, then our goals changed and the life of the ewe was the primary goal. The first fetus was had brownish fur but was some what deformed in subtle ways and had a distinct odor of putrescence, this fetus had been dead for some time. We where able to assist the ewe delivering the first fetus with out much more trouble and the afterbirth followed shortly after. We where unable to detect another fetus but as ewes normally have twins we expected another fetus. Some time later Sheep #2 delivered the second stillborn lamb.

Sheep #2 is now back up on her feet and eating and drinking but exhausted. Both fetuses where buried in the orchard to give their life back to the earth. We will keep an eye on her for the next few days and see how she does.

So lessons learned;

We believe that the two fetuses where goat/sheep hybrids which almost never live to full term, so in the future we will need to be more careful keeping the buck away from the ewes when we have the goats breed. We also learned more about delivering animals out in the field and what to look for in an animals labor. So while it was a sad day there where lessons to be learned and knowledge to be taken way from the experience.